In an increasingly technological age, static electricity and electrostatic discharge (ESD) can be costly or dangerous. In particular, electrostatic discharge (ESD) can ignite flammable mixtures and damage electronic components. In addition, static electricity can attract contaminants in clean environments.
Such effects of static electricity and ESD can be costly in electronic device manufacturing. Contaminants attracted by static charge may cause defects in components of electronic devices, leading to poor performance. In addition, ESD can damage components, making a device completely inoperable or reducing device performance or life expectancy. Such losses in performance lead to lower value products, and, in some instances, lost production and a higher rejection rate of parts, resulting in higher unit cost
As electronic devices become increasing complex and component sizes decrease, the electronic devices become more susceptible to ESD. In addition, manufacturing of such devices uses intricate processing tools that may be difficult to form from metal. Metal components exhibit transient currents that may result in electrostatic discharge, for example, when first contacting parts. More recently, manufacturers have turned to ceramic materials for use in manufacturing such electronic devices. While ceramic materials are typically insulative, manufacturers use coatings and additives to provide electrostatic dissipative properties to such ceramic materials.
While ceramic materials tend to have high Young's modulus, high wear resistance, and dimensional stability at high temperatures, ceramic materials may be difficult to form and machine into intricate tools and components useful in electronic devices. Typically, formation of ceramic components includes densification performed at high temperatures, often exceeding 1200° C. Once formed, typical electrostatic dissipative ceramics exhibit high density and increased hardness, in some instances exceeding 11 GPa Vicker's hardness, making it difficult to machine detail into ceramic components.
More recently, manufacturers have turned to polymeric electrostatic dissipative materials. Much like ceramic materials, polymeric materials are generally insulative. As such, polymeric materials are typically coated with an electrostatic dissipative coating or include additives, such as graphite or carbon fiber. While such materials may be easier to form into tooling and electronic components, such polymeric materials typically exhibit poor mechanical properties and poor physical properties relative to ceramic materials. For example, such polymeric materials often exhibit unacceptably low tensile strength and high coefficients of thermal expansion, limiting the applications in which such materials may be useful. Further, such polymeric materials exhibit poor mechanical property retention after exposure to high temperatures. In addition, such polymeric materials often use carbon fibers, carbon black, or graphite. When machined into intricate components having small feature sizes, such materials can have rough surfaces and can form shorts and hot spots, leading to electrostatic discharge.
As such, an improved electrostatic dissipative material would be desirable.